Help

If you are uploading your own PDF, follow these guidelines.

For paperbacks

Settings for exporting to PDF or creating from Distiller:


• Fully embed all fonts used in the document. Take care that all fonts are only embedded once. Subsetted fonts over multiple pages can cause problems when your PDF is rasterized for print. Your document may be printed with symbols instead of fonts, garbled text or missing text.
• Set compatibility mode to Acrobat 4(Acrobat 4 did not support transparencies and will flatten them when creating the PDF).
• Leave the PDF's colorspace in its original profile. Do not convert CMYK to RGB or vice versa.
• Turn off Overprint and Simulate Overprint
• The PDF filesize should not exceed 700MB
• Do not downsample your images unless they are fully rasterized. If they are fully rasterized and the DPI is greater than 300, downsample to 300 DPI.
• Flatten your final PDF to a single layer.
• Flatten all transparancies.

Settings for image files within the PDF:


• Image compression should be set to ZIP if you want lossless (no artifacts/distortion-free) images. To reduce filesize, use JPEG -> High.
• If you are printing a color book that has black & white images in it, the black & white images should have the colorspace set to grayscale.
• Leave the images' colorspace in their original profiles. Do not convert CMYK to RGB or vice versa.
• Do not use CCITT or LZW compression. LZW compression creates multi-strip images, which may show white lines when printed.
• Use ZIP encoding for grayscale images.
• The gamma of a grayscale image should be between 2.2 and 2.4.
• DPI should be between 300 and 600 DPI.

Color casewrap hardcovers

• DPI should be between 300 and 600 DPI.
• Use an untagged CMYK workflow with CMYK TIFFs whenever possible. If the original workflow was RGB, do not convert to CMYK.
• Solid blacks will print solid at 100% with no other colors added. If you do add colors to improve the richness of the black, TAC (total area coverage) should never exceed 270%.
• Avoid very light color builds of less than 20%. Below 20% tint variation is very difficult to control on a consistent basis.